A recent initiative to further enhance the customer experience has resulted in the delivery of two bespoke training courses for conference and events staff at venues in Cambridge.

Constantly striving to develop its service, Conference Cambridge, the official free venue-finding service for Cambridge University and its Colleges, as well as hotels and other unique properties in and around the city, held sessions focusing on the ‘Customer Experience’ and how to conduct the ‘Perfect Tour’ site visit.

The idea for the training followed a mystery shopper exercise, conducted by Conference Cambridge, which highlighted that some aspects of customer service could be further improved.

Both sessions were run by Paul Sanders of Shopper Anonymous and attended by 18 delegates from both academic venues and hotels.

Judith Sloane, Deputy Manager at Conference Cambridge said: “In addition to the mystery shopper exercise, we also carry out a regular Customer Satisfaction Survey which monitors the level of service received by event organisers making enquiries. Over half the respondents rated the service, speed, quality and relevance of information as excellent which is very encouraging. However, we don’t want to rest on our laurels and neither do our venues. There is always room for improvement and we want to aim for ‘best practice’ and excellence across the board.”

Trainer Paul Sanders added: “By organising this training, Conference Cambridge is demonstrating a real commitment to further improving the excellent service provided by its member venues.

“It was great to see the fantastic level of commitment, enthusiasm and willingness to learn displayed by those attending, including taking on new ideas to improve current practice.”